Endurance
by thebluninja
Summary: For the September contest in Aria's Afterlife. Post-Control, the uploaded Shepard is trying to track down all of her teammates. Zaeed Massani is having none of it.


_Author's Note: The September writing challenge was to have Control-ending Shepard trying to get in touch with one of the people she knew. Other people are going for the predictable (Garrus) and the less predictable (Vega and Parasini) and I figured, why not Zaeed? I don't think he'd want to talk to the Shepard from any version of Control. I haven't decided on what ending Lone Survivor will have, so this could end up being canon to it._

* * *

Zaeed slipped into the hole in the mountain. There were still enough shoring posts and buildings half-buried in the mud to identify the mine as having been a turian endeavor, once upon a time. In the days before the Reaper war. Before _her_.

He pulled out Jessie, the good old rifle now repaired courtesy of Tali, in those joyous days right after the defeat of the Reapers. He quashed the feeling before he could start waxing goddamn nostalgic, and clicked on his visor's IR mod. The entrance seemed clear, but he couldn't be sure until he scouted out more of the place. The rock was heavy with iridium, which would block scans from orbit. "Just like that one mission," he muttered to himself, shining his light down two branching passages.

The mining tunnels were fairly large, big enough for an YMIR mech to tromp down them without bumping the ceiling yet. The walls were fairly smooth, thanks to mining lasers and the careful work of mechs, but he kept frosty, sweeping the IR beam around carefully, walking a short distance into each tunnel to check them out.

It wasn't the retirement house on the beach on Eden Prime, but it'd do. Of course, that house was probably doing just fine. He hadn't blown it up or set it on fire, like he'd been forced to when _she_ found him on Bekenstein, Illium, Omega, and half a dozen other places he'd barely landed long enough to refuel and pick up food and heat sinks.

With the area provisionally clear, Zaeed returned to his shuttle, carefully backing it up to the entrance of the mine, setting it down just right to block the entrance. It might slow down his escape, but it would mean that _she_ couldn't use her troops to cut him off from the shuttle before he could fly off. _She_ wasn't willing to shoot him down – yet, even if he couldn't figure out why _she_ wanted him alive. Okay, he had heard the words, but it still didn't make any goddamn sense.

With the shuttle parked, he squeezed out the tiny access port on the roof, spreading around a camo net. With the color scheme swapped to match the brown rock, and the natural heat-scattering, the place should be completely invisible to scans. Now he just had to wait, and wonder just how long it would take _her_ to find him again.

Two days passed, with only the quiet drip of water and his own footsteps to mark it. Zaeed spent his time exploring the mine, sorting through the occasional piece of trash. The place still had a decent amount of ore left untapped, so someone would come back here at some point. The galaxy needed to be rebuilt after their trial by Reaper fire, even if he wasn't sure who would be doing the rebuilding. One wall had a pair of names etched into it, a turian script he didn't bother to translate. Two miners who no doubt fell in love, or some lonesome turian's love note to a husband or wife left at home. Zaeed didn't care; Jessie was by his side again, and it was him against probably insurmountable odds, as usual.

He wandered back to the shuttle each night, sealing the door and laying down on the cot with Jessie by his side. The crash of thunder woke him on the third night, and he moved up into the cockpit, watching the light flicker through the holes in the camo net as it strained and fluttered against the wind and the rain.

The morning light came, and he blinked in confusion, stretching in the pilot seat and reaching down to pick up Jessie, only for his hand to find nothing but empty air. He bolted upright, whirling around, eyes darting back and forth, searching futilely – his gun was missing. _She_ had to be here.

Heart heavy in his chest, he opened the cockpit door and looked into the back of the shuttle. The rear cargo door was open, and Jessie was propped up on his bunk. The husk standing between him and the gun clinched it. "Zaeed," it said with Shepard's voice, "really, aren't you ready to stop this? All this pointless running?"

"You haven't beaten me yet," he growled, refusing to entertain the thought that yes, she had. "How'd you get in here, anyway?"

"I was already in the mine," she said. In the darkness, he could hear more footsteps – probably the turian miners, damnit. "Come on, Zaeed. It's me, Shepard. The hero who helped you get Santiago, remember?"

"No, it's goddamn not you, not anymore. Not since you became the Reaper Queen." His left hand clenched at his side. If he rushed her now, he could probably knock her out the rear door. The question was, what were the marauders armed with, and should he go for Jessie to try and kill them, or just take off and run for it again.

"Zaeed, I'm hurt. Why don't you trust me? I stopped the fighting. I helped everyone who was left." One hand pressed to her chest, but since he couldn't tell if the husk had been male or female, it sort of ruined the effect.

"Helped? You call that goddamn _helping_ them?" He embraced the anger. It was, after Jessie and his shuttle, about all he had left. "I stopped on Earth. If there's a single human left walking around, I sure didn't see them. And what about your friends? You think Vakarian is alright with your new goddamn looks?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" A marauder stepped into the small pool of light from the shuttle, speaking in Garrus' voice. "We're together now. There's no more war, no more conflict. Just a handful of misguided people like you who don't want to set down their weapons and enjoy the peace."

"The only thing you want me to enjoy is a grave," Zaeed snarled. His hold-out pistol was two steps away. If he could get to it, take out this fake Garrus, and then the husk …

"Zaeed, I'm hurt. Is that any way to treat us?" Tali's voice came from the darkness, another marauder stepping into the light a moment later. "I didn't fix up Jessie so you could fight us with it, I fixed it so you could finally set her aside."

"It's not dying, Zaeed. Join me. Join _us_," Shepard insisted. "No more war, no more fighting. You can finally relax and enjoy that retirement."

"I was enjoying my goddamn retirement, before you went and harvested everyone else on Eden Prime," he said. Scratch the pistol, it didn't fire fast enough. Maybe if he threw Shepard? Not reliable. Shotgun was in the cockpit, but under the panel for easy draw when sitting, so he couldn't reach it in time.

"You were there, Zaeed. You saw the propaganda. They thought now was the time to kick every other race and take over." She actually sounded sad about it. He chalked it up to blatant psychological manipulation, and ignored it. There was one action that would let him take out all three, but it was going to hurt like a bitch.

"Why don't you want to be with us, Zaeed? Scar free living is pretty good," Garrus-marauder said, putting one foot up the ramp.

Zaeed lunged suddenly to the left, picking up the Widow. Shepard's old gun, actually, somehow left unscathed by Harbinger's final attack that killed so many people there at the end. It was going to hurt like hell, but he swung the rifle around, hardly giving it a chance to unfold before bracing the stock against a ration crate and pulling the trigger. The explosion was louder than usual in the confined space, but his shot went true, blowing the husk apart into meaty chunks, and one of the marauders fell, leaking cybernetic fluid from the gaping hole in its abdomen.

Even with it braced against the box, his arms were shaking from the force of the recoil, and the other marauder was closing fast. It still didn't have any weapons, but turian talons sharpened with cybernetics were nothing to scoff at either. He whipped the rifle up over his head, letting his hands slide down the barrel, and slammed it into the marauder's head like a cricket bat.

It fell to the deck with a wet-sounding thump, blue fluid leaking. "Why, Zaeed?" the other one asked, one hand pressed futilely over the wound. "Why don't you want to be with us?"

"Did you choose this?" he asked, rubbing the armor over his elbow. It was going to be sore for a week.

"What? I, well, of course I did!" Tali stuttered out weakly as he other arm collapsed, dropping her to the deck.

"I don't goddamn think so," Zaeed said, picking up Jessie in his left arm, and putting two rounds through the marauder's head. It was time for him to leave this place now. If _she_ had found him, then whether there were more husks in the mine or not, there would be more on their way. He took a moment to dump the bodies out the back, and wipe up most of the fluid with an old shirt from the batarian who used to own the shuttle.

There were still thousands of planets out there, inhabited and not. Still places he could go, could keep on surviving, keep avoiding and fighting Shepard for as long as it took. Why he was resisting never even occurred to him. He just knew he had to survive, even if he was the last goddamn human in the galaxy.

He was Zaeed Goddamn Massani, and no trumped-up computer copy was going to control him.


End file.
